Orphans of Eldorado

by Milton Hatoum

  At that time the memories came slowly, like drops of sweat. I struggled to forget, but I couldn’t. Even without knowing it, I wanted to get close to my father. Nowadays, the memories return intensely. And they’re clearer.

  I was getting used to the work on the harbour. I talked to young people who were going to study in Recife, Salvador and Rio de Janeiro. Others were going to Europe. People arrived from many countries, and from every corner of Brazil. The problem was the poor; the government didn’t know what to do with them. At dawn, the squares were littered with families sleeping on old newspapers, and that’s where I read news items about my father, in those crumpled, dirty pages; the most important news being the competition for a freight line from Manaus to Liverpool. If Amando won the franchise he would get assistance from the government to buy another freighter. Estiliano confirmed this, saying my father would need me. He wanted me to talk to Amando in Vila Bela.

  I asked why we shouldn’t meet in Manaus.

  In Vila Bela your father’s far away from his problems. He’s in his own house.

  Florita’s never been back to see me, I said.

  That’s my friend bearing a grudge. Jealousy. But that’ll come to an end soon.

  I didn’t know if Amando had already fixed something with Estiliano. I wasn’t as young as I used to be, but I didn’t have the perspicacity or cunning to suspect a father’s trap to catch his son. What I did was to throw myself into the nightlife around the port. With the clothes I was given by the passengers, it wasn’t hard to win over women from the famous cabarets. I drank for free on board the La Plata and worked as a porter and tourist guide. In the Adolpho Lisboa Market, Zé Braseiro’s show attracted the tourists at the same time as it appalled them. He was a lad who only had arms and hands—his legs were two stumps of meat. He went around in a little cart pushed by an assistant. On Saturdays, this assistant set up a trapeze in the storehouse by the fish stalls. Zé Braseiro would climb up a rope and swing round the trapeze, put on his display up above, and was greeted with applause. The tourists wept for pity and left money on the cart. Sometimes he repeated the display in São Sebastião Square, in front of the Opera House.

  I’d have lived that way for a long time, but the meeting with Amando changed my life. The city had grown unsettled. The traffic in the port had decreased. It wasn’t the war in Europe, the First World War. Not yet. I could see people were irritated, indignant. Everything seemed strange and violent. I read my father’s outburst in the papers: he complained about absurd taxes, customs dues, the inefficiency of the port, the ballyhoo of our politics.

  That’s not the only reason Amando’s angry, said Estiliano. He’s found out you’ve abandoned your studies and are wandering around, sleeping in the city brothels.

  How did he find out?

  He knows everything. He’ll tell you about it when we meet him.

  Isn’t it too late for reconciliation?

  It’s the chance of a lifetime for you. He’s getting old, and you’re his only son. You must take a boat to Vila Bela before Christmas.

  At the beginning of December I went to the house to see Florita. A neighbour told me she and my father had left for Vila Bela. I went into the garden and peered into the parlour through the gaps in the blinds, but I couldn’t see my mother’s picture on the wall, though the black piano was still in the same place.

  While I was looking at the room, I recalled a recital at the house by the pianist Tarazibula Boanerges, to celebrate Amando Cordovil’s purchase of the company’s second barge. I was about sixteen at the time. During the dinner, Amando embraced a young guest and said: You’ve got a vocation for politics; you should be a candidate for Mayor of Vila Bela.

  The young man, Leontino Byron, asked which party he should stand for.

  That’s not important, my father answered. Winning’s all that matters.

  That was one of the few times I saw Amando enthusiastic, and I was even happy when he introduced me to the guests at dinner. One of them, a director of the Manaus Tramway, wanted me to meet his daughter. He pointed at a young girl next to the piano. She was smiling at the keyboard: she had good teeth, beautiful eyes and features, everything was good and beautiful in fact, only she was too pale; her skin was white as paper. I was still looking at her almost transparent whiteness when Amando said to his friend:

  There’s no point. My son’s crazy about little Indian girls.

  He went back to talking about the barge and freight prices. I remember I left the room and went with Florita into the garden. I told her I didn’t want to live with Amando, either in the white palace or the house in Manaus.

  Since your mother died, seu Amando’s never loved anyone—only his damned barges.

  She kissed me on the mouth, the first kiss, and asked me to be patient. Crazy about little Indian girls. I repeated those words with the taste of Florita’s kiss on my lips.

  With these memories, I came away from the empty house, and decided to leave work and travel to Vila Bela. I told the owner of the Cosmopolitan I was going to give up the room.

  Working in the harbour was no job for a Cordovil. Your father’s freighters have got a future.

  I had the impression everyone knew my movements, and was surprised when the owner of the grocery store gave me a ticket to Vila Bela in the La Plata, along with a typed note: Meeting at the lawyer Stelios’s house at 5 in the afternoon on 24 December. AC. Amando had everything worked out: the date of departure, the ship, the time and the meeting place. Years later I had suspicions about the authorship of the note. It might have been written by Estiliano. But the fact is I went in the expectation of talking to my father. I disembarked at Vila Bela at two in the afternoon of 24 December, and when I caught sight of the white palace, I felt the emotion and sense of oppression you feel when you return home. Here I was someone else. That is, I was myself: Arminto, the son of Amando Cordovil, grandson of Edílio Cordovil, sons of Vila Bela and the River Amazon.

  I discovered my father wasn’t at home when Florita, dressed only in a nightgown, gave me a tight, long embrace. I felt her strong hands moving over my back, lowered my head and whispered: Servants can sniff things out. Look what happened when we had fun that afternoon.

  She loosened her grip and looked at me with a guiltless smile: Don’t you want some more? Was it just that afternoon?

  That afternoon produced a lifetime’s jealousy. I asked if she’d known I was coming.

  Neither you nor your father can live far from here, she answered.

  That’s what she said; then she went to get my bath ready. I noted that Amando’s hammock was slung in the same place in the parlour. My room was cleaned and ready, with the mosquito net hung over the bed as if I’d never left home. In the back garden, I spoke to the caretaker and his wife. Almerindo and Talita came to live in the back of the white palace when Amando abandoned the Boa Vida plantation to dedicate himself to his freighters. Florita, out of spite or jealousy, treated the couple as if they were strangers. They hadn’t lost the subservient habit of calling me ‘Doctor’, as they did when I was a boy. Almerindo did repairs in the house, whitewashing the façade after the winter rains. Talita looked after the garden and cleaned the stone centrepiece of the fountain. It was in the shape of my mother’s head; Amando had had it made after she died. From a very young age, I used to look at the young face, the grey stone eyes which seemed to question me. I was on my knees in front of the head when I smelled the waft of scent from the Bonplant perfumery. Florita informed me that the bath was full. After the bath she served lunch: beans with pumpkin and maxixe, grilled fish and farofa with turtle eggs.

  Your father’s completely stuffed with food. He didn’t even have a siesta.

  Where is he?

  In the Carmelite School. He went to see the headmistress. Then he was going to Dr Estiliano’s house.

  Our meeting’s at five, I said, knowing Florita already knew. But I want to see the old man first.

  Be careful not to turn Christmas sour, she w
arned me.

  Is he in a good mood?

  When he’s in Vila Bela he’s only short of hugging the moon.

  I went to Ribanceira and waited in the shade of the cuiarana tree. Vila Bela was hiding from the hot sun. Everything was still in the afternoon heat. I remember the noise of a boat, the sounds of a river that never sleeps. The school gardener opened the gate and this tall, burly man appeared, in dark jacket and trousers. He wasn’t wearing a hat. I thought this might be the moment to talk. Between us there was the shadow of my mother: the suffering he’d borne since her death. For Amando, I had put a brutal end to a love story. I was afraid of the confrontation, and hesitated. He took quick steps, his hands clenched as if the fingers had been amputated, his eyes fixed on a point somewhere in front of him. His well-combed hair looked like a helmet. My father was walking towards the white palace. As I emerged from the shade, he lifted his head towards the bell in the tower, swung round and walked towards Matadouro Street. I think he’d decided to go to Estiliano’s house straight away. At the end of the square he stopped, and his crossed arms grabbed his shoulders as if he was hugging his own body. He slowly bent his legs and fell to his knees. His head was shining in the corner of the square. The man was going to collapse forwards, but he twisted and sank backwards instead. I shouted out his name and ran towards him. On his back, he lay staring at me, his face contorted in pain. I was floundering, trying to massage his chest. Then there was a single embrace, for my dead father. The man I most feared was in my arms. He was still. I hadn’t the strength to carry him on my own. In a short time the town awoke and curious bystanders surrounded his body. Somebody pointlessly said that Vila Bela’s only doctor had gone to Nhamundá. Florita arrived in such a state of despair that she pushed me away, screaming, and fell weeping to her knees. Estiliano appeared a few minutes later. The bystanders moved back while the big man leant over Amando, kissed his face and delicately closed his eyes.

  I had spent some four or five years without setting foot in Vila Bela, and from the moment Amando’s wake took place in the Carmo Church I saw how beloved he was. This left me confused, for the praises for the dead man contradicted my image of the living father. I knew he liked giving alms, a vice I inherited and kept up for a long time. And I remembered how much charity he dispensed at the festivals of Our Lady of Mount Carmel. But after his death I discovered he’d been a real philanthropist. He gave food and clothes to the Carmelite Orphanage, and contributed to the building of the bishop’s palace and the restoration of the town jail. He even paid the jailers’ wages, a favour he did both to the government and the locals. At the funeral, Ulisses Tupi and Joaquim Roso, river pilots Amando trusted—as well as Denísio Cão, a strange boatman from Jaguar Island—offered their condolences. Not even Amando could stand Denísio. He knelt down and crossed himself, with his long, horsy, sad face. The orphan girls from the Sacred Heart of Jesus were at the cemetery too, all wearing the same uniform: a brown skirt and a white blouse. Girls. One of them looked more grown up—like a woman with two different ages. She was wearing a white dress and was looking upwards, as if she wasn’t there, as if she wasn’t anywhere. Suddenly her look met mine, and the angular face smiled. I didn’t know the girl. I looked at her so hard that the headmistress of the Carmo School came over to me. Mother Joana Caminal came alone, offered her condolences and said dryly: Senhor Amando Cordovil was the most generous man in this town. Let us pray for his soul.

  And off she went, with the girl and the other orphans in tow.

  The room where he slept in the white palace was still as he had left it. All I did was move the hammock to another part of the room. During his siestas, Amando’s body used to obstruct the way to the windows. I shortened the strings and brought the hammock nearer the middle window. That way I could see the ramp up to the Market and the river, I could feel the life coming from the waters.

  Florita reacted to her boss’s death with a great deal of sadness. She wore white clothes instead of full mourning, and still cooked my father’s favourite dishes. Whether because she forgot, or out of habit, sometimes she put Amando’s plate and knife and fork at the head of the table; I ate alone, not looking at the empty place.

  At the beginning of the New Year, I went with Estiliano to Manaus. He gave me a box from the Mandarim with the papers Amando kept in the house. When Estiliano opened the inventory, I discovered my father had owned a plot in the Flores neighbourhood, near the asylum. He left a tidy sum to his friend, along with a house on the bank of the Francesa Lagoon. A little embarrassed, Estiliano said that the money would buy him wine for his old age. The house would be his refuge in Vila Bela.

  Amando’s generosity to his beloved Stelios didn’t upset me. I asked the lawyer to be my representative in the firm; then I asked for money to live on, suggesting a monthly allowance. Estiliano spoke of a bank loan to pay Holtz, the shipbuilders: how could I ask for so much money? He couldn’t allow it.

  Get another lawyer, he said firmly. There are lots in Manaus.

  But only one Stelios, I said.

  We reached an agreement on how much I could take out. And he himself suggested that the money should be sent by Lloyd’s internal post. I tried to insist that he should run the firm, but he refused: he wouldn’t be coming to live in Vila Bela for a few years. I was the heir, I should take over . . .

  I have neither the experience nor the desire, I interrupted.

  Amando trusted the manager. You could live in Vila Bela and spend a few days in Manaus. And look after the Boa Vida plantation.

  I came to live here, but I couldn’t go two months without a visit to Manaus. I spent them in the office, looking at the pile of papers on the desk and getting irritated with problems of all kinds: parts for machines, the dismissal or hiring of employees, missing merchandise, customs dues, taxes. The manager responded to my doubts with few words, or with a haughty silence. I was the boss before time, which confounded him. When he cornered me to make a decision, I asked Estiliano for help. The lawyer sat in my father’s chair, looked at the documents I was to sign and questioned the price of transporting goods. With the voice of a croaking dog he would complain: If Amando was here . . . Sometimes he criticised me because I was sharp with the manager. I couldn’t divine his thoughts, and I didn’t have the serenity of Estiliano to withstand the cold look that sought out my father’s portrait on the office wall. Why did he look at his dead boss so often? In Vila Bela, I only thought about the manager and the firm when I saw the Eldorado some hundred yards from the white palace, and then I thought my life depended on that cargo-boat plying the Amazon. But I forgot the ship on the day I encountered the girl I’d seen at Amando’s funeral. The woman with two ages. Dinaura. I couldn’t remember her face in detail; her eyes, yes, the look in her eyes. To see again what memory has erased is a great happiness. Everything came back to me: the smile, the sharp look in the angular face, eyes more almond-shaped than mine. An Indian? I tried to find out where she was from, but never did. I found something else; something that depends merely on chance, on a single moment in life. And I saw it was too late to undo the work of destiny.

  When Estiliano heard me talk of Dinaura, he was contemptuous: That’s a good one, a Cordovil infatuated with a girl from the jungle. And Florita, without knowing the orphan, said that her look was just a spell: she looked like one of those madwomen who dream of living at the bottom of the river.

  The look in Dinaura’s eyes was what most attracted me. Sometimes a look has the force of desire. Then desire grows and wants to penetrate the flesh of the beloved. I wanted to live with Dinaura, but I put off the decision for as long as vanity would allow me. I don’t know if my life was less unhappy than hers then. It was certainly more futile. Empty. Since I’d moved here, I’d waited anxiously for the ships that came from Europe up the Amazon; when one of them berthed at Vila Bela, an officer in the port gave me the ship’s menu and informed me about the passengers. His name was Arneu, a gossipy, sycophantic man, so much so you felt sorry for him.
If he said he’d seen pretty girls on deck, I’d go to dine and dance in the boat’s saloon. Sometimes I embarked for Manaus and had a good time at the dances in the Ideal and the Luso, went to the matinees at the Alcazar, the Rio Branco and the Polytheama, and to the operas in the Opera House. Then I’d go to the Chalet-Jardim to meet the Italian singers. One afternoon, while I was having a beer in the High Life, I saw one of the lads from the pension in the street—Juvêncio. And the worst of it was that he recognised me and came into the bar.

  The young gentleman from the Saturno, he said, stretching out his hand.

  I was going to shake his hand, but Juvêncio didn’t want affection or courtesy, he wanted money. I gave him money and he laughed, revealing his toothless gums, and went right back to the street. Years later, I saw Juvêncio in a fight near the same bar. He was a grown man, and the High Life had gone bust.

  Back at Vila Bela, I’d spend the night drinking wine and reading opera librettos, the latest Pathé-Journal and old newspapers. I would grow melancholy before sunrise. Then I’d go out at dawn through the dirt streets of this neglected town, as far as the Fishermen’s Steps, where I saw the shapes of heads looking out of windows in the darkness—old people unable to sleep; I don’t know if they were laughing or waving at me. Near the jungle, I saw the miserable shacks of the Aldeia, heard words in indigenous languages, murmurs, and when I went back to the river bank, I saw fishing boats moored by the ramp to the Market, boats laden with fruit, a steamer going down the Amazon to Belém. I had my breakfast in the Bar do Mercado, then I prowled round Sacred Heart Square, climbed up into the tree on the Ribanceira and thought about Dinaura until the sun lit the orphanage dormitory. If a Carmelite saw me sitting on a branch, I’d ask after Dinaura. The nun wouldn’t answer, would look as if she’d seen the devil, and I’d say: She’s going to leave the orphanage and come and live with me. Then I’d give a laugh which shocked the nun, a laugh that sounded obscene but in fact was just pure desire.